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PAR TERRE / ANNE NGUYEN DANCE COMPANY


Dancer, choreographer, author and theatre director Anne Nguyen founded the par Terre Dance Company in 2005. She has created about twenty shows, several interactive installations and short films. She also wrote a collection of poems and several articles on dance.

Coming from the world of breakdance battles and influenced by scientific studies, she combines urban social dances with a geometrical, pure, destructured choreographic expression that exalts the power of abstraction. She derives her inspiration from mathematics, martial arts, utopia and myths. She draws from the observation of gestures, danced as well as ordinary, individual as well as collective, to turn urban dances and popular cultures into a support for a reflection on tradition, on social markers, on diversity, on cultural appropriation and on the tensions between multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. Her choreographies depict dance as a universal and salutary art that embodies the resistance of the living in the face of ever-shifting values.

Regularly called upon for her expertise on urban dances and cultural issues, Anne Nguyen has participated in numerous debates and symposiums and gives conferences that put into perspective dance, culture, and society.

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
  • Underdogs
  • Fri. 23 May 2025 (8:30 p.m.)
    Théâtre Les 3 Chênes/ Agglomération de Laval / Loiron-Ruillé (53)
  • [Superstrat[
  • Sun. 22 June 2025 (10:30 a.m.)
    Nave of the Grand Palais, as part of the program around Ernesto Neto's installation / Paris (75)
  • Witch Hunting
  • Fri. 10 October 2025
    Opéra de Massy / Massy (near Paris) — *PREMIERE
  • Hip-Hop Nakupenda
  • Wed. 21 May 2025 (3:00 p.m.)
    Théâtre Gérard Philippe / Orléans (45)
  • Heracles on his head
  • Fri. 16 May 2025 (2:30 p.m.)
    Théâtre des 2 Rives / Charenton-le-Pont (94) — Young audiences


In 2024/2025, the par Terre / Anne Nguyen Dance Company is an associate artist to La Manufacture CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux • La Rochelle, as part of the associate artist-in-residence program by the ministry of Culture, and to Théâtre des 2 Rives de Charenton-le-Pont.
In 2024/2025, the par Terre / Anne Nguyen Dance Company is in residency at l’Opéra de Massy.

Since 2005, the year of its creation, the par Terre Dance Company has been invited to take part in artist-in-residence programs in Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, at Théâtre Louis Aragon – Scène conventionnée de Tremblay-en-France, at l’Espace 1789 – Scène conventionnée de Saint-Ouen, at Le Prisme – Centre de Développement Artistique de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, at Le Rive Gauche – Scène conventionnée de Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, at Théâtre 71 – Scène nationale de Malakoff, at Scènes du Golfe – Vannes et Arradon, at Théâtre André Malraux de Chevilly-Larue, at Centre culturel l’Imprévu de Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, at L’Auditorium Seynod, at Centre d’Art et de Culture de Meudon, to Théâtre de Choisy-le-Roi, Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national – Art et création pour la diversité linguistique (94), to Théâtre Molière -> Sète scène nationale archipel de Thau (34). The par Terre Dance Company has been in residency at CENTQUATRE-PARIS, at CN D Centre national de la danse, in Ivry-sur-Seine and at la briqueterie - CDCN (94), as well as at several National Choreographic Centres. Anne Nguyen has been invited to an artistic and cultural co-construction at Maison des métallos.

Anne Nguyen’s shows have been presented at many prestigious festivals, such as Holland Festival in Amsterdam, Tanz im August Festival in Berlin, Crossing The Line Festival in New-York, OzAsia Festival in Adélaïde, Festival d’Avignon IN and OFF, URB Festival in Helsinki, Huê Festival in Vietnam, COLOURS International Dance Festival in Stuttgart, Biennale de danse du Val-de-Marne, Festival de danse de Cannes, Groove'N'Move Festival in Geneva, Festival de la Cité Lausanne, Schrittmacher Festival in Heerlen, Tanz Bremen Festival, Potsdamer Tanztage in Potsdam, Underconstruction Festival in Wuppertal, TANZtheater INTERNATIONAL Festival in Hanover, Kidanse Festival by L’Echangeur CDCN, Odyssées en Yvelines Festival by Théâtre de Sartrouville et des Yvelines - CDN, or Dies de Dansa Festival in Barcelona.

The par Terre / Anne Nguyen Dance Company has been presented at prestigious French venues, including La Villette, Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, Opéra de Limoges, Opéra de Massy, Opéra de Saint-Étienne, numerous National Scenes, Conventioned scenes of national interest, National Choreographic Development Centres, National Choreographic Centres and National Drama Centres, as well as at many international venues, including Gibney Dance in New-York, Salders Wells Theatre in London, le TQW in Vienna, Akademie der Künste in Berlin, PACT Zollverein in Essen, Tanztheater Wuppertal, Mercat de les flors in Barcelona, Dansens Hus in Stockholm, NorrlandsOperan in Umeå, Dansehallerne in Copenhagen, Charleroi Danse, KVS in Brussells, Theater Rotterdam, Frascati in Amsterdam, Kortrijk Theater, Amare in The Hague, tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf, Theater im Pfalzbau in Ludwigshafen, HELLERAU in Dresden, National Center for Dance Bucharest, Theater Azarian in Sofia, Trafó in Budapest, Zagreb Dance Center, Yangon National Theater, Kuala Lumpur Performing Art Center, Ben Thanh Theatre in Hô Chi Minh, Centre Culturel Français in Kinshasa, or Brasil's Bank Cultural Center in Brasilia.

Anne Nguyen’s short film Épicentre, presented internationally, won the Performance Award at Urban Films Festival 2022 and the 3rd place Audience Award at TANZAHOI International Dance Film Festival 2022.

The par Terre Dance Company is funded by l’Aide pluriannuelle du Ministère de la Culture / DRAC Ile-de-France, la Région Ile-de-France for “Permanence Artistique et Culturelle” and l’Aide au fonctionnement du Département du Val-de-Marne.

PRODUCTIONS

  • Behind the Line, production 2024 — executive production: Le Carreau du Temple
  • Kata, production 2017

ONLINE PRODUCTIONS

 

“Anne Nguyen turns the hip-hop dancer into a modern-day hero, representative of the youngsters who struggle within precarious and violent environments. A hero who’s attached to his art, which is first and foremost a culture and a lifestyle – in spite of all political distortions.”

La Terrasse – Nathalie Yokel (17 December 2022)

 

“Anne Nguyen has contributed and keeps contributing to what hip-hop is today: first as a pioneer of female breakdancing, then as an author of theater pieces, poems, films and now a video game. At the avant-garde of this movement, today she is one of the rare choreographers who are successful while being close to the original spirit of hip-hop. Nguyen’s deepest preoccupations are to bring people closer together, to push forward the limits of hip-hop and to inspire everyone to dance.”

Tanz — Thomas Hahn (July 2021) / Germany

 

“Autarcie (….) succeeded in creating its own world, using the language of hip-hop to say something.”

The New York Times (October 2016) / USA

 

“It could be described as a sort of b-boying performance in the style of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Or rather a kind of breakdance integrating the concepts of William Forsythe. Choreographer Anne Nguyen is used to these kinds of comments about her work. She understands the comparison as she is keen to deconstruct hip-hop vocabulary in order to reconstruct it, like a puzzle, to build her complex choreographies to increasing acclaim.”

Libération – Eve Beauvallet (5 May 2015)

 

“No-one in hip-hop has reinvented the art of the dance move in the way that she has. Anne Nguyen is to breakdance or popping what the research of Merce Cunningham or Lucinda Childs is to contemporary dance: an extremely lucid look at choreographic composition and movement, the overall effect resulting in an abstraction that overflows with musicality, dynamism and joy.”

Artistik Rezo – Thomas Hahn (5 May 2015)

 

“Since 2005, Anne Nguyen follows her pared down yet imperious artistic line, carving straight and sharp without deviating from her aspirations, even less from the fundamentals of her discipline. With a scientific background, she puts hip-hop movement through the mill to extract spectacular equations, uncluttered yet always surprising. A love of constraints and a passion to sublimate them: typical Nguyen.”

Le Monde Magazine – Rosita Boisseau (13 April 2012)

 

“Dance has something of a ritual about it. The par Terre Dance Company takes its name from the almost sacred relationship to Mother Earth, where the Earth has the role of a deity: “par Toutatis!” (an exclamation invoking the name of a Celtic god) becomes “par Terre”. The expression “par Terre” also reflects our attachment to the laws of Nature, starting from the premise that the laws of physics governing the movement of the human body are specific to planet Earth and our environment. For me, dancing consists in placing one’s body in resonance with the laws of nature in order to draw closer to the beauty of Mother Earth. To choreograph is to feel the sharpness of the body’s movements to then place them in a context of space and time. Today, we are surrounded by hardness, squareness, immenseness. Faced with an inert environment, the mechanisation of our lifestyle, the sedentarisation of our bodies, how does the body react? Through dance, the contemporary body endeavours to appropriate the constraints of its urban environment to free itself from them. Through our shoes, through the concrete, at the same time incorporating the T-shaped right angles that are covering the Earth, dance is a spontaneous resistance movement on the part of the living.”
Anne Nguyen

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